Your community gets a public website at its own address — name, logo, an About section, announcements, amenities, the board and a contact mailbox, with a Resident sign in button. The board turns it on in two minutes. Included on every plan, free during the 30-day trial.
30-day free trial. No credit card required. The website is part of the portal, not an add-on.
An HOA website is the public page a neighbor, a prospective buyer or a contractor finds when they search for your association: who the board is, how to reach it, what the community offers, and what is happening this month. On Effortless HOA it is not a separate product to buy or a site to maintain. Every association already has a portal address — pineoakhoa.effortlesshoa.com, or your own domain — and when the board switches the community website on, a visitor who is not signed in sees a public page built from what the board typed in Settings, plus your name, logo and colors. Residents click Resident sign in and land in the private portal they use today. It is off by default, included on every plan, and free during the trial.
A sample community website, section by section. Every word on it was typed by the board; the name, logo and colors come from the portal.
Pine Oak Estates
112 homes on the ridge above the lake
About
Pine Oak Estates is a self-managed association of 112 single-family homes, incorporated in 1998. The volunteer board meets on the second Tuesday of each month at the clubhouse.
Amenities
Announcements
Annual meeting: Tuesday, January 13
Posted 2026-11-02 · Clubhouse, 7 pm. Two board seats are up for election.
Pool closes for the season on October 31
Posted 2026-10-20
Board & contact
An illustration with sample data. Pine Oak Estates and the people named on it are not real.
Everything a visitor reads comes from one settings form plus your association’s name, logo and colors.
The top of the page carries your association's name and logo, the colors from your portal branding, and a tagline of up to 120 characters — the one line you want a neighbor or a buyer to read first.
An About section of up to 2,000 characters, written as plain paragraphs, and up to ten announcements, each with a title, a short body and a date, shown newest first.
A simple list of up to twenty amenities — the pool, the trail network, the boat launch, the clubhouse rental — the things a prospective buyer scans for and a new resident wants to know exist.
Up to twelve board members as a name and a role the board types in, and one association contact mailbox shown as a mailto link. Nothing here is read from your member list — a name appears only because someone typed it.
Up to eight links with a label the board writes — the city's garbage schedule, the county assessor, the pool company, the governing documents wherever they are hosted. Only https addresses are accepted.
A prominent Resident sign in button takes homeowners to the private portal, where dues, documents, events, requests and forms live. The public page is the front door; the portal is the house.
No domain to buy, no hosting to set up, no template to pick. The website is off until a board member switches it on.
In the board portal, open Settings and choose Community website. Only an owner or a board member sees it.
Turn the website on, type a tagline and a few About paragraphs. Each field shows a live character count so you know where the limits are.
Announcements, amenities, the board members, the association's contact mailbox and up to eight links. Each list has a limit — ten announcements, twenty amenities, twelve board members, eight links — so the page stays short.
Save writes only the website's own settings, and a preview link opens the public page at your address. Edit and save again whenever the board has news.
Your portal address is chosen at sign-up. The website can be on the same day.
The page title is “Your Association — Community website”, the description is your tagline, the canonical address is your own, and Organization structured data carries your name, web address and logo. Search engines are allowed to index it, so a search for your association's name finds a page you control.
The page is laid out for a 390-pixel phone screen first, then widens. A buyer reading it in a driveway and a resident opening it on a laptop see the same sections in the same order. It is served cached, so it loads quickly; a change the board saves is live for visitors within about a minute.
Off by default. Only an owner or board member can switch it on or edit it. Every field has a length limit, links must be https, control characters are stripped, and text is shown as text — never as HTML. The page never reads your roster, so no resident's details can appear by accident.
Six things a board might reasonably expect from “a website” that this first version deliberately leaves out.
CC&Rs, bylaws, minutes and budgets stay in the resident portal, behind the sign-in. The public website carries no files at all — not even a PDF — so nothing a board uploads for residents can leak onto a search result.
Events, RSVPs and the calendar live in the resident portal. Use an announcement for the dates the whole neighborhood should know; the people who can attend already sign in to see the rest.
One fixed, phone-ready layout, with your logo, name and colors applied. There are no themes, no custom pages and no drag-and-drop editor. A board edits text in a settings form, not a website.
The public site has no form to fill in. The contact section is the association mailbox the board typed, as a mailto link; requests, questions and payments happen inside the portal, tied to an account and a property.
The page is built from what the board types plus your name, logo and colors. It never reads your members or properties, so no resident's name, email, phone or address can appear, and the board list is a list someone typed.
The website is a public front door with a Resident sign in button. Dues, documents, elections, plan reviews, forms and the directory stay where they are — in the private portal every plan includes.
A standalone website means a second bill, a second password and a second place where the board's contact details go stale. Here the website is a section of the portal's settings, edited by the same people with the same login.
A website built by one volunteer on a personal account disappears when they move. This one belongs to the association's portal: a new board edits the board list and carries on, and nothing has to be handed over.
Your logo, your name and the colors you chose for the portal are the website's logo, name and colors. A resident who clicks Resident sign in sees the same community on the other side of the door.
Most communities have a site on a general website builder, pay an HOA website service, or make do with a social media group. Each does some things this does not — and the reverse.
Swipe sideways to see the whole table.
| Capability | Effortless HOA | General website builder | HOA website service | Social media group |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Costs nothing beyond the portal | — | — | ||
| Resident sign in to dues, documents and requests | — | Sometimes, separately | — | |
| Your own address and logo | — | |||
| Edited by the board in a settings form, no web skills | Editor to learn | Editor to learn | ||
| Cannot accidentally publish resident data | — | — | — | |
| Found by search engines as the association's page | Rarely | |||
| Custom page design and layout | — | Templates | — | |
| Public document library | — | By hand | Files tab | |
| Survives a board turnover without a handover | Account transfer | Account transfer | Admin transfer |
“General website builder” and “HOA website service” describe categories, not named products. Two rows go against us on purpose: a builder gives you a custom design and a website service can host a public document library, and this website does neither. If those matter more to your board than a site that costs nothing and cannot leak resident data, a builder is the right call — see our guide to HOA website builders.
Common questions about the community website that comes with Effortless HOA
The private side of the same address — dues, documents, events and requests — is the homeowner portal.
Start a free trial, choose your portal address, and switch the community website on from Settings. Included on every plan — nothing extra to buy.
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